It's times like this I really have to remind myself not to leap to conclusions

The FBI is investigating the hanging death of a U.S. Census worker near a Kentucky cemetery, and a law enforcement official told The Associated Press the word 'fed" was scrawled on the dead man's chest.

I'm not ashamed to admit that the first place my mind went upon seeing this breaking story was to wonder if the apparent murderer was a follower of the blubberings of Glen Beck; Rush Limbaugh, and the like. (And also, to wonder if it's time to move to England)

Maybe yours did too. After all, Beck's hosted Rep. Michele Bachman, who is either insane, a liar, or both (if I had the money to bet, I'd bet on insane) and says things like this:

Take this into consideration. If we look at American history, between 1942 and 1947, the data that was collected by the Census Bureau was handed over to the FBI and other organizations at the request of President Roosevelt, and that's how the Japanese were rounded up and put into the internment camps ... I'm not saying that that's what the Administration is planning to do, but I am saying that private personal information that was given to the Census Bureau in the 1940s was used against Americans to round them up, in a violation of their constitutional rights, and put the Japanese in internment camps."

Limbaugh and especially Beck both, meanwhile, like to put it about that the census equals ACORN. And, to them ACORN equals (quoting Joe Conason, who I like to listen to):

The fans of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck regard ACORN as a criminal enterprise that fosters tax fraud, prostitution, child prostitution and even murder (thanks to a satirical "confession" by an employee filmed surreptitiously in the San Bernardino ACORN office). But ACORN chief organizer and CEO Bertha Lewis swiftly dismissed the employees caught on those videotapes and set about reforming the flawed processes that enabled those individuals to speak for the organization. No overt acts were committed by any of the people caught on those tapes -- and so far nobody has found that any of those theoretical "crimes" ever took place.

ACORN also equals President Obama's Watergate!

And President Obama, of course, equals The Manchurian Candidate.

This is the small-headed bullshit that people just like Beck, and Limbaugh, and Bachman, have been dropping into the ear canals of their all--too-eager listeners.

So perhaps you'll understand why my first reaction to reading about a man hung with a "Fed" label on him was to wonder:

If, perhaps, one of those individuals decided to let his or her actions speak louder than their words--and by their I mean the above-named wingnuts, plus Coulter, etc.

I'm not ashamed to admit, I wondered that. I'm not ashamed to admit it, because after thinking that...I thought again. As John A. of AmericaBlog says,

It's too early in the investigation to link this to the Republican demonization of the Census in particular (ACORN) and the US government in general (suggesting that the Obama administration was full of communists bent on destroying our country).

He's right, of course. It is too early...if understandable. And not shooting just the very moment we see the slightest flutter is what separates us from the wingnuts.

So I just wonder. I'm not asserting, but I do wonder.

I suspect this story will be coming up again in the future.